Using Connect Store

[jshaw300]

Are people using the Connect Store to buy their music, or other preffered services?

What are peoples experiences of the Connect store? Here are my thoughts-

The layout is nice but my first impression was that the prices for individual tracks are more expensive than other services. My next impression was that the damn thing was frozen, so as I tried to scroll across to see the whole store (my third gripe) nothing happened. The links didn't highlight and the buttons didn't work. 20secs later and it was off and running. For some reason the pane that contains the store is too big, so I scroll across to get to the edge of the pane. The alternative is to reduce the left pane - the Folders and Playlist pane. I noted later that upon restarting Connect, it hasn't remembered these positions.

The News has not really ben updated since I first looked about a month ago. So, I still have to read some fluff about B. Spears and partner...

So - what to buy... Well, I like to Browse. So I look for a way to find what new soundtracks are out, as that is my particular want. Nothing in the top genres section, no classical either. Ok. Browse music. Cool - choose soundtracks. It then lists every single artist in that genre. Not cool. No album covers, no suggestions, no top sellers. Nothing. This is not a great browsing experience....

Back to main page. Frozen again. Wait for it to come to life.

Surely it can only get better.

[willykyu]

What country Connect store are you using, and on what software?

Japan, US and Euro stores are quite different! Euro one, I'm sometimes using, is atrocious. Extremely poor in contents, full of bugs, almost updates free, and slow.

I guess the japanese one is better, and the US one too. I'm not sure though.

I buy some music on it from time to time. As I'm French but live in Japan, it's sometimes convinient to buy French titles from the Connect store... though there's not much. And sometimes I'm just lasy to go and buy the CD of an album I like. But there's room for improvements...

I guess it's just around the corner, as CONNECT Store europe put an enquete on their site a month ago, where you could answer about several things you wanted to see changing, and special serveices you would use if available, as video download ("would you be ready to pay for it?"), and month submition, to download freely as much content as you like... but it wasn't clear as they talked about "free downloads of "old" connect titles (?), and one free album you can keep per month for about 16 euros.... interesting.

But when all these major changes appear is a great mistrey... as usual... hope everything's fonna be ready for PS3 launch! it has to be. SONY does'nt have any goo service yet (excpet the new P-TV rental videos for psp in Japan, which is neat I have to say, but not heavy in content... ).

[mercury_in_flames]

Dont use connect as its a hassle to redownload the rights to your music, you have to send an email and so on. Why bother? I would just get an mp3 with other means, er herm, or just buy the original.

[mgillespie]

My impressions of the Euro store are not very good either.

1/ I had a free music download with my NW-A3000, but none of the music I wanted was available to purchase.

2/ I could not even register, the link just did nothing.

3/ Slow and unresponsive. Sometimes you are waiting for 30+ seconds for something to happen. This is on a 2MB ADSL connection, so it's a Connect issue, not a connection issue!

If Sony want to get into Electronic music distribution, and be a serious competitor to iTunes and iPod, then they have to do something SERIOUSLY better than that buggy Connect and NW-A series units..